This is a fascinating article. As an industry economist (public transit) I found the energy premise elegant. You provide a basis for analyzing social benefits and costs across energy sources. Mitigating or reversing the negative impacts of single-use products can also be expressed as energy.
Great article and thanks for the idea of the "energy slaves" working for people in the developed world!
The embedded energy description also makes it easier to get across the idea that higher quality products are actually a way to save money. If people would use credits to buy better products that last longer it would actually improve the world!
Unfortunately, quite some people are brainwashed into believing that changing their whole wardrobe latest every two years, and remodelling their houses every four years is an absolute necessity...
I enjoyed your article. Have you also read Barnabas Calder's book 'From Prehistory to Climate emergency' ? which follows a similar line but related to how the use of fossil fuels changed literally everything in buildings, cities and beyond.
David JC MacKay, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air
(Sanderson draws on MacKay and so calls his slave units 'MacKays,' if I remember correctly.)
Jean Marc Jancovici, The World Without End
But Calder's book is the best for detail of the anthropology, the ancient and recent political history, and how our built environment is a literal expression of energy access x these factors.
Manhattan is a literal example too: the steel in our supertall towers could have been used for wind turbines. A graphic comparison:
Since you asked, “Embedded energy” as a term has pretty much fallen out of use, with “embodied energy” being the more common term. I would make the case that if you are looking at this in terms of climate, then you should be talking about embodied carbon rather than embodied energy, since if the embodied energy is from clean renewables, who cares? “Embodied carbon” is an awful term because it is not embodied, it is in the atmosphere already. That’s why I was part of a group that coined “upfront carbon emissions” to identify all the emissions that go into making everything from a hamburger to a house. I wrote a book about it, “the story of upfront carbon” that I would be happy to share with you.
thanks for your suggestion of "embedded" vs. "embodied"; I'll add a note to my chapter.
as far as energy vs. carbon goes, I do think talking about energy is useful b/c it shows us how much we rely on energy for our modern life. that said, 'embodied C' is also an important concept.
If politics is really the core issue, then decades and decades of climate and energy politics have clearly failed. That part seems obvious. Maybe it’s time to consider different approaches. Defaulting over and over again that the big bad fossil fuels simply have better politics, despite having the technology, the press, public schools, academia, Hollywood stars, and a huge coalition on your side, comes across as a little pathetic. Maybe you're just doing politics wrong.
A problem with articles like this is that they imply that everyone uses the same number of those "energy slaves". I've biked to work for 30 years. I didn't fly anywhere last year. The electricity for my toaster came from the solar panels on my roof. I haven't bought a fast-food burger in some 20 years, but had a venison burger over the weekend - from a deer I hit with an arrow, butchered myself, and hand ground some of into burger. And I know a number of people - in the US midwest - with lower emissions than mine.
Seems like it would be of some value to point out that people in most of the world don't use anywhere near the number of 'energy slaves' that are discussed in the article. That there are a good number of people in the wealthy world that also don't use nearly that much. But that there are people in the wealthy world that are using many, many more than 100 per day. Along these lines: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922003597
The “energy slaves” idea is a good reminder that modern living standards come from abundant, reliable power. The real question is which sources can deliver that level of constant output without volatility.
Societies that expand firm, low cost energy don’t just get more comfort. They get more productivity, more industry and more economic freedom.
Energy abundance scales human capability. That’s the part of the discussion we need more of.
While your comment seems unexceptionable on its face, your substack name betrays your mercenary motive for making it. Are you the least bit embarrassed?
"Societies that expand firm, low cost energy don’t just get more comfort..."
You're right, they get all the socialized costs of that "low cost" energy too. Fossil fuels built modern societies, but they've turned out to have unacceptably high social cost. Thankfully, energy production and downstream technologies aren't static under market forces nudged by collective intervention. Nuclear may be a source of "firm, low cost" energy today by some accounting, but I, for one, project it will last as long as the current generation of nuclear plants being built does. At the end of their design lives, if not before, they'll be replaced by renewables+storage, with upgraded power grids. Meanwhile, renewables are already taking over from fossil carbon around the world, to meet the new demands of expanding economies.
Above all, the accelerating upward trend of global heat content must be capped. That means collectively intervening to decarbonize, one economically cost-effective way when all costs are internalized or another, in the shortest time politically possible. My money's on renewables+storage, grid upgrade, and decarbonization of the consumer economy. But feel free to round up private capital for any commercial nuclear power you think you can get into production.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. If my comment came across in a way that felt dismissive, that wasn’t my intention.
My point is simply about system requirements. Any large-scale modern economy needs stable, low volatility power to anchor industry, manufacturing and compute. Intermittent sources are valuable, but they operate best alongside firm capacity.
The social cost discussion matters, but it applies across all technologies. What ultimately determines long-term development is which mix can deliver reliable, round-the-clock power at predictable cost.
That’s the perspective I’m coming from, and I didn’t mean for it to read as anything other than that.
This is wonderful, thank you for doing it, and we'd like to send you a set of energetic.thecityatlas.org. The goal in the game is 2kW of zero carbon supply for 8M New Yorkers. Not easy! Also, our original is a 2021 to 2035 version, but we updated to 2026 - 2040, and our next version, 2029 - 2043 will be harder yet. Ugh.
Also note that 2kW per capita happens to be the minimum supply to run NYC on heat pumps in the winter, according to research from urbangreencouncil.org:
If people better understood how close to the bone things are, data centers for ChatGPT would not be a priority.
FWIW, Saul Griffith makes the point that the US average lifestyle is 4kW, if all-electric (considering the waste heat from fossil fuel in the 10kW number). Cued here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ewEaTlGz4s&t=3093s
Which makes it more reasonable...however, UK FIRES only sees the UK getting to about 1kW per person by 2050, and the Royal Society lands in about the same place.
Jean Marc Jancovici's book is a good capsule history of the challenge (by his account, traceable to a fork in the road in the early 19th century understanding of economics).
Two other notes from my own energy questions. Interestingly, the UK current per capita demand is about 1.7kW, *if* all-electric. So it seems you can live pretty well in that range (of course many are below, and former Prince Andrew was way above).
But agriculture is a puzzle. P. 813 of "Powering the Planet" (Lewis 2007) includes this:
"For calibration, the 2 kW/person average turns out to be about twice as much as it takes in energy just to eat. If you convert a 2000 calorie per day diet into wattage, that works out to be about 100 W. But, the energy needed to produce a certain amount of food—to grow, fertilize, distribute, and refrigerate it—is 10 to 20 times greater than the energy embedded in that amount of food. Thus, 1 kW/person is required in our highly mechanized Western society just to eat."
This is a fascinating article. As an industry economist (public transit) I found the energy premise elegant. You provide a basis for analyzing social benefits and costs across energy sources. Mitigating or reversing the negative impacts of single-use products can also be expressed as energy.
Great article and thanks for the idea of the "energy slaves" working for people in the developed world!
The embedded energy description also makes it easier to get across the idea that higher quality products are actually a way to save money. If people would use credits to buy better products that last longer it would actually improve the world!
Unfortunately, quite some people are brainwashed into believing that changing their whole wardrobe latest every two years, and remodelling their houses every four years is an absolute necessity...
I enjoyed your article. Have you also read Barnabas Calder's book 'From Prehistory to Climate emergency' ? which follows a similar line but related to how the use of fossil fuels changed literally everything in buildings, cities and beyond.
It's a great book!
Other good 'energy slave' reminder books
Eric Sanderson, Terra Nova
David JC MacKay, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air
(Sanderson draws on MacKay and so calls his slave units 'MacKays,' if I remember correctly.)
Jean Marc Jancovici, The World Without End
But Calder's book is the best for detail of the anthropology, the ancient and recent political history, and how our built environment is a literal expression of energy access x these factors.
Manhattan is a literal example too: the steel in our supertall towers could have been used for wind turbines. A graphic comparison:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NQrZnT1QGncxbMes8
thanks for the book suggestions, I'll look 'em up
Since you asked, “Embedded energy” as a term has pretty much fallen out of use, with “embodied energy” being the more common term. I would make the case that if you are looking at this in terms of climate, then you should be talking about embodied carbon rather than embodied energy, since if the embodied energy is from clean renewables, who cares? “Embodied carbon” is an awful term because it is not embodied, it is in the atmosphere already. That’s why I was part of a group that coined “upfront carbon emissions” to identify all the emissions that go into making everything from a hamburger to a house. I wrote a book about it, “the story of upfront carbon” that I would be happy to share with you.
thanks for your suggestion of "embedded" vs. "embodied"; I'll add a note to my chapter.
as far as energy vs. carbon goes, I do think talking about energy is useful b/c it shows us how much we rely on energy for our modern life. that said, 'embodied C' is also an important concept.
If politics is really the core issue, then decades and decades of climate and energy politics have clearly failed. That part seems obvious. Maybe it’s time to consider different approaches. Defaulting over and over again that the big bad fossil fuels simply have better politics, despite having the technology, the press, public schools, academia, Hollywood stars, and a huge coalition on your side, comes across as a little pathetic. Maybe you're just doing politics wrong.
A problem with articles like this is that they imply that everyone uses the same number of those "energy slaves". I've biked to work for 30 years. I didn't fly anywhere last year. The electricity for my toaster came from the solar panels on my roof. I haven't bought a fast-food burger in some 20 years, but had a venison burger over the weekend - from a deer I hit with an arrow, butchered myself, and hand ground some of into burger. And I know a number of people - in the US midwest - with lower emissions than mine.
Seems like it would be of some value to point out that people in most of the world don't use anywhere near the number of 'energy slaves' that are discussed in the article. That there are a good number of people in the wealthy world that also don't use nearly that much. But that there are people in the wealthy world that are using many, many more than 100 per day. Along these lines: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922003597
Please consider rephrasing to “energy servants”: slave is a very loaded term.
good suggestion, I will make that change in my textbook
Excellent perspective. Brings it home.
Le gaspillage d'énergie est le cancer de notre civilisation.
The “energy slaves” idea is a good reminder that modern living standards come from abundant, reliable power. The real question is which sources can deliver that level of constant output without volatility.
Societies that expand firm, low cost energy don’t just get more comfort. They get more productivity, more industry and more economic freedom.
Energy abundance scales human capability. That’s the part of the discussion we need more of.
While your comment seems unexceptionable on its face, your substack name betrays your mercenary motive for making it. Are you the least bit embarrassed?
"Societies that expand firm, low cost energy don’t just get more comfort..."
You're right, they get all the socialized costs of that "low cost" energy too. Fossil fuels built modern societies, but they've turned out to have unacceptably high social cost. Thankfully, energy production and downstream technologies aren't static under market forces nudged by collective intervention. Nuclear may be a source of "firm, low cost" energy today by some accounting, but I, for one, project it will last as long as the current generation of nuclear plants being built does. At the end of their design lives, if not before, they'll be replaced by renewables+storage, with upgraded power grids. Meanwhile, renewables are already taking over from fossil carbon around the world, to meet the new demands of expanding economies.
Above all, the accelerating upward trend of global heat content must be capped. That means collectively intervening to decarbonize, one economically cost-effective way when all costs are internalized or another, in the shortest time politically possible. My money's on renewables+storage, grid upgrade, and decarbonization of the consumer economy. But feel free to round up private capital for any commercial nuclear power you think you can get into production.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. If my comment came across in a way that felt dismissive, that wasn’t my intention.
My point is simply about system requirements. Any large-scale modern economy needs stable, low volatility power to anchor industry, manufacturing and compute. Intermittent sources are valuable, but they operate best alongside firm capacity.
The social cost discussion matters, but it applies across all technologies. What ultimately determines long-term development is which mix can deliver reliable, round-the-clock power at predictable cost.
That’s the perspective I’m coming from, and I didn’t mean for it to read as anything other than that.
This is wonderful, thank you for doing it, and we'd like to send you a set of energetic.thecityatlas.org. The goal in the game is 2kW of zero carbon supply for 8M New Yorkers. Not easy! Also, our original is a 2021 to 2035 version, but we updated to 2026 - 2040, and our next version, 2029 - 2043 will be harder yet. Ugh.
Also note that 2kW per capita happens to be the minimum supply to run NYC on heat pumps in the winter, according to research from urbangreencouncil.org:
https://www.urbangreencouncil.org/grid-ready-powering-nycs-all-electric-buildings/
If people better understood how close to the bone things are, data centers for ChatGPT would not be a priority.
FWIW, Saul Griffith makes the point that the US average lifestyle is 4kW, if all-electric (considering the waste heat from fossil fuel in the 10kW number). Cued here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ewEaTlGz4s&t=3093s
Which makes it more reasonable...however, UK FIRES only sees the UK getting to about 1kW per person by 2050, and the Royal Society lands in about the same place.
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/33aaf353-b7de-45b0-9c40-5f62975b2127
https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/large-scale-electricity-storage/
Jean Marc Jancovici's book is a good capsule history of the challenge (by his account, traceable to a fork in the road in the early 19th century understanding of economics).
https://bookshop.org/p/books/world-without-end-an-illustrated-guide-to-the-climate-crisis-christophe-blain/8d7029e0374370df
Two other notes from my own energy questions. Interestingly, the UK current per capita demand is about 1.7kW, *if* all-electric. So it seems you can live pretty well in that range (of course many are below, and former Prince Andrew was way above).
But agriculture is a puzzle. P. 813 of "Powering the Planet" (Lewis 2007) includes this:
"For calibration, the 2 kW/person average turns out to be about twice as much as it takes in energy just to eat. If you convert a 2000 calorie per day diet into wattage, that works out to be about 100 W. But, the energy needed to produce a certain amount of food—to grow, fertilize, distribute, and refrigerate it—is 10 to 20 times greater than the energy embedded in that amount of food. Thus, 1 kW/person is required in our highly mechanized Western society just to eat."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0rWjVMvjHb0YmNYUzZNWndtWHc/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-WC0UIrn3DXH-alWCPc4mrg
Fantastic article. Thank you for thinking of the future. And the video is astounding. Robert’s physiology is mind-blowing!